“The most handsome men live in the South and the most beautiful women live in the North.”

This old adage — summed up by the phrase “namnam buknyeo” (“men from the South, women from the North”) — has long stood as a romanticized trope of inter-Korean harmony.

Yet in co-directors Sun Kim and  Morten Traavik’s documentary “North South Man Woman” (남남북녀), this idea of a perfect match is stripped away to reveal more a nuanced reality, balancing lofty expectations with pragmatism.

Juxtaposing personal and historical traumas with the mundane, sometimes humorous, friction of everyday domestic life, the movie